CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: THE SERBS; No Water, Power, Phone: A Serbian City's Trials

People were out in the sunny weather here today, on this national holiday to mark May Day, but few could hide their anxieties.

This holiday, on Monday because May 1 fell on a Saturday this year, is usually a time for picnics and long walks in the lush spring countryside in Serbia. But in Novi Sad today people were lining up for water, clutching their plastic containers and bottles at a well on the side of a street.

Behind the apartment blocks at the end of the street, dense black smoke still poured from the an oil refinery, hit by NATO missiles over and over, most recently the night before last.

''For eight days we have not had water -- the whole of Novi Sad has no water,'' said Mila Radavanovic-Zecevic, an economist who lives in this city, the second-largest in Serbia.

Novi Sad was plunged into darkness, like 70 percent of the country, when NATO bombing knocked out the national electricity grid on Sunday night. The national power company said that NATO had dropped bombs containing carbon, causing a short circuit in the distribution network.

The company said its engineers had restored power to 30 percent of the people who had lost it by early today, but appealed for patience and for people to use power sparingly. During the day, the grid collapsed again, the company said, and power failed through most of the country.

Electricity was restored to some areas of Belgrade today, but the supply remained intermittent and whole districts were still without it by evening. For those who had electricity, President Slobodan Milosevic could be seen on state television discussing the problem with the ministers responsible, but few people in the capital appeared concerned.

''We'll manage,'' said one young woman in the street.

In Novi Sad, though, a city of 300,000, that is the capital of the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina, people are beginning to realize that the problem could last. People out on the streets said they feared that they were in for a long and difficult period and that things were likely to get worse. ''It is awful,'' said Ms. Radavanovic-Zecevic. ''We don't know if and when it will be stopped, and we do not know what will happen on any one day or hour.''

She was with her family, sitting on the terrace of a cafe on the banks of the Danube. It is one of their favorite spots, with little boats tied to a wooden wharf and with a view of the city's modern suspension bridge.

The view was changed drastically a few weeks ago when NATO bombs destroyed the bridge. ''It was a nice spot but now it is not nice,'' said Ms. Radavanovic-Zecevic.

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Now she comes down here to fetch water from the Danube to use to flush the toilet at home. For drinking water, her family and other residents have been lining up to use one of about 10 wells in the city.

But the Zecevic family said they are worried that things will only deteriorate further. Ms. Radavanovic-Zecevic is the Yugoslav representative of the Swiss company F. Hoffmann-La Roche, and she worried that the company would have to stop importing medicines and veterinary drugs. Without power or communications, she said, she doubted that the banks could function and that international payments could go through.

Her daughter, Maja, was pregnant and said she feared the consequences for her health and her baby's. ''At the beginning we had everything we needed,'' she said. ''We had food, the medical structures, telephones and the infrastructure of civilized life, and my feeling was I was safe here for myself and my baby.''

''But now I am afraid that it is not safe,'' she said, ''and there will not be the hygienic standards and medical standards I will need in a month or two.''

Her mother added: ''The worst thing is that NATO is targeting the psychology of people. Now we feel anger, which is not characteristic, and we think all the world is our enemy, and that is not good for people.''

Local journalists say that there are signs of a change of mood in the country after a month of bombing, with people forced now to concentrate on issues of daily survival, but that they do not see people moving to press the Government to yield to NATO's conditions.

''Do you think when we are in a war and have bombs falling, that we can think about politics?'' said Ms. Radavanovic-Zecevic.

On the streets, the mood is one of resigned hurt. ''Why did they have to destroy it so completely, without any chance to repair it?'' asked Milenko Mrdjanov, a retired lawyer as he looked at another destroyed bridge, this one in the center of the town.

Some people remain upbeat, though. ''We have a small problem but we'll manage to solve it,'' said Ivan Bojanovic, an electrician who crossed the Danube on a raft provided by the Yugoslav Army, to do a job on the far bank.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 4, 1999, on Page A00018 of the National edition with the headline: CRISIS IN THE BALKANS: THE SERBS; No Water, Power, Phone: A Serbian City's Trials. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe